News

If you have spent much time with anyone under the age of 30 the last few years, you can be forgiven for thinking that online shopping is taking over the retail world. The shift to e-commerce accelerated during the pandemic as even the most digitally unaware worked to avoid in-person contact. In 2020, for example, […]

“Let’s go and invent tomorrow rather than worry about yesterday,” Steve Jobs once boldly declared. “Show me a problem, and I’ll look for a technology to fix it,” said Bill Gates. These words, and many like them from other tech luminaries, perfectly capture the techno-optimism that has become so ascendant today – a shared vision […]

Every year at the Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting, Warren Buffett gives shareholders insights into his investment thinking and keys to long-term success. At the May meeting, Buffett observed that over the past 58 years he has made only a dozen or so truly great decisions. This works out to about one every five years. You […]

With the banking crisis and collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) in March, and now First Republic, we were anxious to take a look at the recently reported first quarter bank earnings. The following is a brief summary of what we learned. Deposit flows were not straightforward. Deposit flight—a bank run—is ulti­mately what doomed SVB, […]

U.S. population growth has started edging higher again after hitting an alarming all-time low during the pandemic. According to the latest Census data, from July 2021 to July 2022, the U.S. population grew 0.38%. Admittedly, that’s still not great – it’s one of the lowest growth rates since 1900. But it’s better than the extraordinarily […]

In 2015 Xi Jinping announced the “Made in China 2025” initiative. The objective was to move China away from laborintensive, lower-wage industries to more technology-focused ones. The Chinese identified 10 priority sectors where it wanted to compete, and dominate. These included semiconductors, aerospace, biotech, AI, robotics, and electric vehicles. Achieving success would mean faster GDP […]

In my estimation, The Economist weekly newspaper (yes, that’s how they refer to themselves) is the single best read for world economics and politics. The newspaper favors centrist governments and has little reporting bias and rigorous fact checking. What they said recently in a front page section on America is both unexpected and encouraging. We […]

Cybersecurity. It is a term you have most likely heard with increasing frequency. It can seem a bit ominous and a bit nebulous. So what does it mean and why should we care about it? Cybersecurity revolves around the protection of digital information. As our lives have become increasingly digital, the volume of online data […]

The Hanson Index is back for its 37th year, our annual attempt to humanize inflation and track prices for goods and services in the Vermont economy — like for a Big Daddy and coffee at Handy’s Lunch (thanks, Earl) and a Vermont fishing license. With inflation heating up, this is a good time to see […]

These words are from Jerome Powell, Chair of the Federal Reserve, whose dual charge is maintaining financial stability (code for low inflation) while also ensuring full employment. It’s a difficult and often impossible balancing act. As you can see from the chart below, inflation has not been cooperating with the Fed recently. It has risen […]

Investors were happy to put 2022 in the rearview mirror, and for good reason. By year-end, the broad U.S. stock market was down 18% while bonds, the “steady Eddie” asset class, had fallen a record-breaking 14%. The pain was particularly pronounced for technology investors who had become accustomed to years of steadily rising share prices. […]